empty ports and empty trailers…

It’s coming folks.

77 million voters fucked around; now they’re going to find out. While the rumors of the Port of Seattle being completely empty this week were perhaps somewhat overblown, shipments of products from China and other Asian countries to the United States are slowing down rapidly thanks to those tariffs, and pretty soon (i.e. the next two or three weeks) the shelves at your local big box will be bereft of cheap plastic crap, and the little that’s left is going to cost a hell of a lot more. It’s likely going to stay that way through at least the rest of the year.

And the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. don’t care, because it’s not going to affect them at all.  Here’s the actual quote from TFG during yesterday’s Cabinet meeting:

“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, you know? And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more.”

That’s your “War on Christmas” right there.

Y’all asked for this; more than half of you, by voting for That Man, or not voting at all, brought this on. And whether it’s the OTR trucker getting laid off* (and people in that industry voted for the current administration by about 73%) and who is now also now mandated to speak English, or the billionaire TechBros who donated millions to the campaign, and are now finding their costs skyrocketing and are taking digs at the administration by line item to online shopping carts displaying the extra costs attributed of the policy. I keep getting update emails on the couple of Kickstarter projects I backed over the last six months or so referencing the impact on potential shipping and pricing changes (the tariffs are hitting the tabletop games industry particularly hard, especially so because of the thin profit margins and the wealth of small-business publishers), and the news is universally bad for business.

Personally, I’m very glad the car we took delivery of yesterday got in under the wire; it was assembled at Toyota’s Kentucky plant, though the vast majority of the parts were sourced from Japan, Mexico, and Canada.

Although so much of this administration’s efforts in the first 100 days has impacted me very personally (see so many of my previous posts regarding my status as a civil servant), I feel a certain frustration with talking about it (which, clearly, I’ve not let it stop me), because it hits on the whole “empathy” discussion that crops up in political coverage (and is particularly trendy academic circles right now); and I really struggle with the fact that this does affect me personally, by bitching about my personal difficulties with all this might make me appear that I lack empathy, given that it’s the general pattern that those of a conservative mindset only change ingrained opinions when things affect them personally, and that’s only after a bunch of prevaricating about whether things are tolerable based on how it hurts those they’ve decided are “the other.”

It’s all so “zero sum” for so many people, particularly That Guy in charge right now; there’s always got to be a winner and a loser; none of this “a rising tide lifts all boats” business; the idea that something can be good for all of us; that there’s no “loser” in a situation, is anathema to their thinking; Like LBJ said during his tenure during the time of the Civil Rights Act:

If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

Convince someone they’re “gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning,” in other words, and  they’ll accept the lash willingly as long as that guy they don’t like gets one more stroke. As Twain may have said, “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

This is truly, in many ways, the worst timeline.

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*- And that’s not even considering entrepreneurial amphetamine dealers or the “lot lizards” loitering outside Buc-ees offering their services to the trucking community…